Murders Los Angeles

Saying he wanted to do the right thing, the man convicted of killing Bill Cosby's only son, Ennis, has written a letter to the California attorney general's office confessing to the crime and asking that his 1998 appeal be dropped. "It is based on falsehood and deceit. I am guilty and I want to do the right thing," Mikail Markhasev, 22, wrote in the letter. "More than anything, I want to apologize to the victim's family.

His mother said a quiet prayer of thanks. His father dropped his head and rubbed his eyes. Four years after Los Angeles High School football star Jamiel Shaw II's death, the gang member accused of gunning him down because he was carrying a red Spider-Man backpack was convicted Wednesday of first-degree murder. Jurors deliberated for barely half a day before returning the guilty verdict against Pedro Espinoza, now 23. The panel found to be true allegations that Espinoza committed the crime in association with a gang and that he personally discharged a firearm.

Erik and Lyle Menendez's Beverly Hills therapist, who heard them confess to killing their parents and then became a key witness in the first of the brothers' two murder trials, was stripped of his psychology license Friday. L. Jerome Oziel, who had been accused by a state panel of breaking confidentiality rules and having sex with female patients, surrendered his license to the state Department of Consumer Affairs' Board of Psychology. In a deal that was agreed to Sept.

They were bone-chilling crimes, sensational murders that spread fear through Los Angeles and turned their mastermind into a criminal antihero familiar to the world. Charles Manson and four of his followers were convicted in the 1969 killings and have been in prison ever since. But now one of them has persuaded a judge to hear her claim that she is rehabilitated and deserves to be freed. San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Bob N.

The annals of child kidnapping are replete with heartbreaking tragedies, but probably none have been quite as bizarre as the crime that first mesmerized, then convulsed, Los Angeles more than 70 years ago. By the time it was over, it would involve not only an apparent abduction, but also impersonation, police coercion, false imprisonment, psychiatric abuse and--this being Los Angeles--a court fight that stretched on for more than a decade.

At first, the murder seemed to have all the markings of an attempted carjacking. When Los Angeles police officers reached the scene on the dark Boyle Heights street July 26, they found affluent software designer Bruce Cleland lying in a pool of blood across the street from his new black 4Runner. His distraught wife, Rebecca, said she had been knocked unconscious when she got out of the vehicle to check the tailgate and awoke to the gruesome sight.

Light does not easily penetrate the clouded story of Betty Short, a 22-year-old unemployed cashier and waitress whose body was found cut in half and gruesomely mutilated 50 years ago this month in a vacant lot in Southwest Los Angeles. The unsolved killing remains Los Angeles' premier myth noir, a tale of a tragic beauty clad in black, prowling the night life, a cautionary fable that rings as true today as it did in 1947. The legend insists on a shadowed, epic tone.

A shootout Sunday between armored car guards and gunmen, one armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, left one bystander dead and at least three people wounded after a botched robbery outside a Van Nuys Costco store teeming with shoppers, authorities said. Panic-stricken customers, many with children, dived for cover in the pandemonium. Bullets shattered car windows 100 yards away.

A videotape played Monday in a Los Angeles courtroom showed that Latasha Harlins had turned away from a scuffle with a Korean grocer when the black teen-ager was shot in the back of the head. "This is not television. This is not the movies. This is real life," Deputy District Attorney Roxane Carvajal had warned the jury. "You will see Latasha being killed. She will die in front of your eyes."

For almost two weeks, jurors in the retrial of the Menendez brothers have been focusing on the bloody details of parricide, replayed shot by shot and larger than life. It has been grim work. They have heard the chilling, metallic clicks of a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun similar to the alleged murder weapons; they have seen the blood-encrusted polo shirt Jose Menendez wore when he died. And countless autopsy photos have been projected on a courtroom screen.

After an eight-month investigation that has taken detectives to four states, Los Angeles police officials say they have made "significant progress" in the search for the killer of actor Robert Blake's wife, but they are not ready to name a suspect. The detectives have spent much of their time pursuing possible leads from videotapes, photographs, letters and other documents that belonged to Bonny Lee Bakley, who was shot to death on May 4 in Studio City, police officials say.

Terry Gray is struggling this Christmas Day to explain to his son something that he himself cannot understand: Why 5-year-old Terry will never see his mother again. Gray is haunted by the Friday afternoon scene that changed his life and that of his son. That day, Gray and his girlfriend, Sandra Dyer, were passing beneath the Harbor Freeway when a man's body dropped from the overpass onto the roof of their car. The man had shot and killed his wife and then shot himself at the edge of the freeway.

The owner of the Palomar Hotel in Hollywood and his stepfather pleaded not guilty Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court on charges of murder, arson and insurance fraud in connection with a fire in August that killed two people. Judge Henry Barela ordered Juan Jose Ortiz, 44, and Joseph Donald Lewellen, 67, back to court Jan. 18, when he will set a date for a preliminary hearing. Ortiz and Lewellen were arrested Nov. 21 at their North Hills home. They could face the death penalty.

A wealthy fugitive charged with murder in Texas and considered a central figure in the disappearance of his wife in New York and the slaying of a woman friend in Los Angeles was arrested Friday in Pennsylvania. The FBI said Robert Durst, 58, son of a New York real estate mogul, was taken into custody by police in Bath, Pa., on suspicion of shoplifting.

A landlord and her son were arrested Thursday on suspicion of murder in connection with an arson fire that killed a 72-year-old double amputee who was one their tenants. Clemetha Marie Dillard, 76, and her son Anthony, 51, were taken into custody early Thursday and will be charged today, authorities said. The victim has not been identified. Anthony Dillard had taken care of the victim--whose legs had been amputated--for the past decade, authorities said.

The city of Los Angeles is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a gunman who killed 16-month-old Bryan Angel Tolentino in Boyle Heights on Monday afternoon. Witnesses described the gunman as a cleanshaven 16- to 18-year-old Latino male, 5-foot-8, with a slim build. He fled in a brown or beige four-door sedan. The gunman fired several rounds as he approached a minivan in the 3000 block of East 6th Street near Euclid.

Double-murder charges against a 35-year-old Van Nuys man accused of raping and killing two female transients were dismissed Wednesday because DNA tests showed that someone else sexually assaulted one of the victims. Steven C. Leigh, described as a satanist and white power advocate, remains a suspect in the murders of Dawn McGrath, 21, and Jamie J. Jensen, 13, found shot Jan. 20, prosecutors said. However, Leigh's attorney, Bruce C.

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella and Loyola Law School professor Laurie Levenson offer their take on the Simpson trial. Joining them is defense lawyer John Burris, who will rotate with other experts as the case moves forward. Today's topic: The Chris and Johnnie show. PETER ARENELLA On the prosecution: "Chris Darden kept his 'eyes on the prize' and rose to the challenge with understated passion, quasi-religious metaphors and powerful word images.

Two men were killed and another was wounded in two Highland Park shootings Sunday that may have been related, authorities said. Officers responded to the first incident at 2:30 a.m. in the 6000 block of Fayette Street, where two men were found shot, said Los Angeles Police Det. David Torres. Edmundo Mendoza, 44, was taken to Huntington Memorial Hospital, where he died at 3:07 a.m.

A shooting that left three men dead and two teenagers wounded in Lake View Terrace was an ambush by a rival gang member, police said Monday. Killed Sunday were Alex Garibay, 19, Raul Silva, 18, and Arturo Becerra, 20, all of Lake View Terrace, said coroner's spokesman Scott Carrier. The injured teenagers, a male and female, were recovering in hospitals from wounds that were not life-threatening, police said. Police declined to identify them because of their age.